COSMIC COURTS

The NCAA works creatively in public space to champion participation over spectatorship and the liberation of recreation over status quo commercial sports culture. Under Molteni’s creative direction, they pioneered the community-centered basketball court painting movement, which has inspired many non-profits and city initiatives to form since.

These court projects call upon Molteni’s research background as a competitive athlete and teaching artist. They also bring together an interest in site specific ground-works, conceptual installation art and accessible, public mural painting. The artist’s early education placed extreme emphasis on the male painters of the Abstract Expressionist movement. As a queer feminist, Molteni has sought to recontexualize the notion of “action painting”, by which Jackson Pollock is famed for making the canvas “an arena in which to act”. Instead they aim to transform the arena into a painting, the court into a surreal multi-use labyrinth for all kinds of bodies, the monument into a horizontal commons, the ground into an altar to the sky. 

As NCAA Team Captain, Molteni works with teams of professional artists, (“NCAA players”), to execute mammoth scale, playable athletic courts. They hire almost exclusively femme, queer, trans and non binary artists who have historically been pushed to sidelines of courts as well as mural sites. Their approach is unique from other basketball court projects which are gaining popularity across the globe.  Together they employ an organic and radically open community and creative process that is engaging and site-sensitive. When Molteni begins a court, they intentionally start with a loose vision so that the most appropriate piece for that space and neighborhood can develop. These pieces are as rich in concept as they are visually vibrant and playful, hand painted by the artists themselves. They are meant to call in all players and all faculties of the mind, body and spirit, as early basketball was designed to do!

In chronological order, the courts they’ve since 2015

• Clubhouse Court, Somerville, MA, 2016 (on Massachusett land, we play)

• Hard in the Paint, Harambee Park, Dorchester, MA, 2017 (on Massachusett land, we play)

• Tormenta en la Cancha/Storm on the Court, El Punto/ The Point, Salem, MA 2018 (on Naumkeag land, we play)

• Courting the Sky, Clasky Common, New Bedford, MA, 2019 (on Wampanoag land, we play)

• Cosmic Court/AKA Lunar Fire, Talbot Middle School, Fall River, MA 2019 (on Wampanoag land, we play)

• A Sea Bird, Sea Green Playground, Seaport/ Downtown Boston, MA 2021 (on Massachusett land, we play)

• in 2021 we also returned to New Bedford to complete the wall surrounding “Courting the Sky”, in 2020 two court projects, including 1 in Singapore were canceled and have not been rescheduled

• The Amazing Technicolor Playscape, Fall River, MA 2022 (on Massachusett land, we play)

The NCAA is honored to share that their first public court work Hard in the Paint, Harambee Park, received a National Public Art Award from Americans For The Arts in 2019!